


Totem

by RurouniHime



Series: Day series [9]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anniversary, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Minor Injuries, Plans, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-09-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 04:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Well. You certainly look pretty.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Oh, good, we match.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Totem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mikahaeli8](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mikahaeli8).



> For mikahaeli8, this series’ most enthusiastic fan. ^_~ I’m sorry this took so long, love. It just refused to sit right. 
> 
> Thank you soooooo much to [snottygrrl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/snottygrrl/pseuds/snottygrrl) for the ever patient beta-ing! *GLOMP*

_You know you are in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. ~Dr. Seuss_

 

“Thought we were driving somewhere,” Arthur says.

Eames waves one hand toward the window. “It’s a mess out there.”

It is: It’s pouring. The flashes of lightning look odd in the darkness, more yellow than white.

“Here.” Eames rolls the dice, then shouts and claps his hands once at the seven. He takes the toothpick from between his teeth. “My winnings, husband, if you please.”

Arthur’s glad to. He leans in, takes Eames by the nape and kisses him deep. Curls his hand around Eames’ slackened fingers and squeezes. “My turn.”

“No—” Eames struggles up, blinking. He passes a hand over his eyes and snags the dice. “No, _I_ won, I go again. Rules, darling.”

Arthur grumbles for its own sake and settles back, feeling at the taste in his mouth with the tip of his tongue. Lightning bursts, sharp and yellow again. Somewhere outside, car tires screech. Eames jiggles the dice in the cup of his palm, not rolling, frowning distantly at the table.

“Stalling isn’t going to make you lose any less decisively,” Arthur states. He drinks from his glass of water. Swirls. Swallows.

“Hmm.” Noncommittal. Eames stops, palms one of the die and rolls the other. It comes up six. “One at a time.”

“Some anniversary.”

Eames tucks his toothpick behind one ear. “Compared to which one?”

“Touché.”

They _were_ going to go out, Arthur is sure of it. There had been plans. Now Eames is dressed in loose jeans with ripped cuffs and one of the back pockets torn off, leaving a dark patch of blue. He has a hooded sweatshirt on, the insanely soft kind that no one ever wants to wash, lest it lose its texture. No shirt underneath, and the zipper comes most of the way up his bare chest, shadowing collarbone, sternum, throat in the sweatshirt’s folds.

He rolls the second die. One. “Ha!”

Arthur makes a grab for it, but Eames is faster. So he grabs for Eames instead, assails him with a longer, more pointed kiss that wilts Eames against him slowly, like a robe sagging off its hanger. Arthur nearly gets his fingers back between his husband’s, but ends up sidetracked, with them wrapped around Eames’ wrist instead.

When they pull apart, the other die is also gone.

Eames grins at him.

“Fine.” Arthur shoves him backward lightly and sighs. Tongues his teeth again and looks around for his drink.

“A valiant attempt.” Eames toasts him with his toothpick, then swivels in his chair. Arthur’s trench coat is over the back of it, the material still glinting with raindrops. Eames digs in one of the pockets, humming under his breath. 

“Arthur.”

Arthur looks up. “Yeah.”

Eames turns from the coat. “What?”

“Said my name.”

Eames laughs. He reaches, touches Arthur’s cheek. “Imagining things, darling.”

Arthur laughs too, more at Eames’ smirk than at his words. “I heard you.”

This time Eames looks genuinely puzzled. He squints and shakes his head. “No, I know your tricks. Trying to distract me. Alright. Getting a… three this time.”

“Not likely.”

Eames rolls. The dice spin to a stop. A two and a one.

Something flickers. Arthur bends over the table.

“Darling?”

“Yeah.”

No response from Eames. Arthur raises his eyes. “What?”

Eames just shakes his head, eyebrows raised. Outside again, a car door slams. Someone is actually driving in this weather.

And just on top of that— another sound from behind in the hallway. Arthur peers over his shoulder. Listens. “Did you hear—”

Eames leans in, one arm resting on the table and a smile playing about his familiar mouth. “Just checked on her. Not ten minutes ago. Out like a light.”

And she wouldn’t have called either of their first names anyway. Arthur rolls his shoulders back, nods, then darts forward, snags the dice. Eames makes a belated grab and laughs. “My god. I really should know better by now.”

“That’s the truth.” Arthur jiggles the dice. Frowns down at his hand and shakes it again. “Did you—”

Eames just clamps the toothpick between his teeth. Thunder rumbles. “Call it.”

“One of them will be a four,” Arthur murmurs, not sure why.

He rolls. A six and a three. Arthur rises, staring down. Eames looks up at him with an eyebrow high on his forehead. 

“Arthur.”

He picks up the dice one by one. Rolls again.

Two. Five.

“No.”

No fours all night. Not a single one.

“ _Oh_ , no.” He steps away from the table. Lightning flashes yellow again, too yellow, and Arthur shields his eyes as it floods the kitchen. Eames watches him from the chair, brow furrowed.

“Arthur.”

When he pulled Eames in, when he kissed him, there was no smell in his clothes. In his skin.

Arthur drops the dice. They skitter over the floor. He doesn’t watch their bounce, doesn’t listen to Eames as he says his name again. No smell. And his mouth— Arthur moves to the front door and opens it. The rain slashes in, hits him in the face and chills his cheeks. He steps onto the porch, off the stoop into the grass in his bare feet. Walks to the street.

Inside the house, someone calls his name. Arthur waves a dismissal behind him. On the road, a car is coming too fast, skidding in the rain. 

He looks back once.

“Arthur?” Eames asks from the doorway.

Arthur steps into the bright beam of headlights.

“—thur? Come on, darling. _Arthur_.”

His eyelids are so heavy. He opens them slowly, dragging away from the darkness. There is warmth on his cheeks, two hot patches against his skin.

The first thing he sees is Eames’ face, sagging into a smile.

“ _There_ you are, look at me, love. Arthur?”

He swallows, makes some kind of sound, and Eames’ hands— they’re his husband’s hands— stroke his face, his jaw and forehead. He’s crouched down, level with Arthur’s eyes and bracketed by… a car’s door frame. Over Eames’ shoulder Arthur can see the anxious features of a woman. She’s outside the car, too, leaning over to peer through the window. Her green rain slicker beads with water. She has a cell phone in one hand.

“What happened?” Arthur croaks.

Eames’ hair is a mess and his tie hangs loose, like he’s been yanking on both. The shoulders of his tuxedo jacket are soaked and he has a bruise forming over his right eye. “Hydroplaned, love,” he says. “We hit a pole.”

Yellow light bathes the dashboard, fills the entire cabin. Headlights, reflecting from another car parked somewhere close. Arthur’s… sitting in the driver’s seat. “How long was I out?”

Eames smiles gently and touches Arthur’s hair. “No more than a minute.”

The woman looks up, away from the car, and Arthur hears sirens approaching. She straightens and hurries away in her heels, arms raised to flag them down. Eames watches her go, then turns back, leaning against the frame of the car, still holding Arthur’s head carefully in his hands.

Arthur tries to sit up and groans.

“No, don’t move.” Eames pushes him gently back, hands now on his upper arms. “Need to get you looked at. Just sit back, love.”

Arthur nods. Reaches for his pocket, but his coat, his long, heavy trench, is in the way.

Eames stills his hand. Moves cloth, half-reaches in himself, then stops and directs Arthur’s fingers to the proper place. Arthur finds the familiar cube, warmed by the heat of his body. The weight is right in his palm. Perfect.

He looks up and finds Eames’ eyes on him. After a second, his husband nods silently.

Under the rain, he can smell Eames’ cologne.

Arthur relaxes at last. He takes Eames’ hand and waits it out as the flashing lights roll closer through the drizzle.

~

They end up in an emergency room that is not as crowded as it could be on such a night. Arthur has a bruise from when the airbag deployed and his head hit the side window. It purples at a gentle pace, a shadow that the light should banish. The slanted ‘L’ on his torso from the seatbelt is much darker, but less painful, for now. Eames has a mirrored contusion, sharp and distinct against his skin. It hurts Arthur to look at it; his fingers itch to touch, to soothe. Wipe it away.

They check him over— they clean the cuts and salve the abrasions on both of them— and then they send them home. 

~

It’s nearly one AM when they reach their door. Arthur stops, swaying in the front entrance, and stares.

It’s crisp and enclosed, a hallway that stretches instead of open, too-large rooms. The clean lines of framed pictures, five black coat hooks, narrow walls and soft carpeting underfoot instead of wood flooring. It’s nothing like their home in his dream. And yet the certainty of that false place lingers, a darkened echo like a gallery covered in dust cloths. 

Arthur is already stiff, sore muscles and achy bones. The side of his head feels hot, too big for his skin. Eames guides him toward the kitchen with a hand around his bicep, kicking aside the umbrellas near the front door and pushing dining room chairs out of their way. 

“Get you some—” Eames pulls a glass down from the cupboard over the sink and fills it with water. Arthur drinks it, hands it back. Drinks another. Eames fills the glass a third time and downs it himself, head thrown back and throat working in the warm light, a hand braced on the counter top to his left. Arthur can see skinned knuckles and wonders what exactly caused it.

In their bedroom, Arthur’s discarded ties are still over the closet door, a wrinkled pair of pants listing on the arm of the chair by the windows. Arthur brushes his teeth but forgoes flossing, manages his sweats and a t-shirt, and groans as he gets stiffly into bed. Eames flips the blanket into place over his legs, and Arthur grits through that last stretch before the pillows catch hold and bear his weight, that instant where his muscles are still on fire. And then it’s gone, and he sighs.

Eames leans onto the bed and cups his face, turns it to the right and left. Arthur notices more bruises, and an ugly red welt forming on the side of Eames’ throat where the seatbelt dug in.

Eames smiles faintly. “Well. You certainly look pretty.”

“Oh, good, we match.” Arthur smiles sweetly, and Eames busses his unbruised temple. His cologne has faded, silently absorbed by the scent of his skin.

“Locking up.” Eames points at him as he backs out of the room. “Do not move. An inch.”

It’s comforting in a way he hadn’t anticipated, the sound of Eames padding around the house. Arthur can hear it when he steps from carpet to linoleum. In fact, all the habitual sounds are easing his body: the click of light switches flipping off, the distant hum of the water heater, the tick of their bedroom clock—

Arthur remembers his watch and thumbs the clasp open, then grunts as he works it over the soreness in his wrist, again as he stretches a little too far to set it on the nightstand. 

“You’re moving,” called from the front of the house.

“You did get the part where I don’t have a concussion,” Arthur states, loudly enough to be heard down the hall. Eames comes back in with more pillows and a smirk.

“Yes, darling, I was paying rather close attention to that bit.”

“Uhuh.”

Eames douses the overhead light in favor of the bedside lamp and props his pillows on the bed. Arthur’s side, but then, Arthur’s sort of on Eames’ side, isn’t he? There’s a weird little thrill in that, one that feels silly and trifling the next instant. At long last, Eames shucks his tuxedo jacket and hangs it unceremoniously over the door to dry. Arthur watches him toe his socks free and thinks about once-again thwarted intentions.

“I dreamt about us,” he says abruptly. By the dresser, Eames’ fingers stall on his cufflinks.

“What happened?” he asks.

“We were playing dice. You kept winning.”

Eames’ lips quirk. “Can’t see how that would tip you off.”

Arthur lobs a pillow at him. Eames catches it and comes back to the bed, shedding his dress shirt on the way. He crawls up to the headboard and settles against it at Arthur’s side. In only his trousers and undershirt, the heat beats out of him like a tangible field. Arthur can feel his own body stretching toward it, a plant reaching for sunlight.

“One was my die,” he continues. “But you always rolled them. Took me so long to figure it out.”

Eames shifts, acknowledgement rather than reaction. The soft drip of the rain outside runs unbroken, the thunder and lightning long past. Arthur takes the die in question out of his sweats pocket— always, always in his pocket— and rolls it along the insides of his fingers, watches it turn from facet to facet. 

“Do you remember the exact moment?” Eames asks eventually, and Arthur thinks, really thinks.

Eventually the die revealed its absolute truth, but even before that, the cracks were splintering from sources he will never be able to pinpoint. He shakes his head. “I don’t know. It was just… off.” 

A room they didn’t have? A _child_ they never—

Arthur shivers.

Cobb once said… or Ariadne, it was Ariadne, said that the Mal they met had been all wrong. And Arthur didn’t give it its due, because how could she know about Mal, how could she really know? But she didn’t; she was just relaying a truth that Cobb had finally accepted. For all the perfection in his memories, for all he’d known his own wife better than anyone else…

In his dream, Arthur had noticed. It was his Eames, every inch, and yet there was something missing, and the world around them warped in that void. The scent of his clothing. The flavor across Arthur’s tongue when pulling out of a kiss. 

“You tasted wrong.”

“Oh, were we kissing, then?” Eames’ eyebrows rise, as do the corners of his mouth. “Or something else?”

“Shh.” But his bump against Eames’ thigh is halfhearted. He thinks suddenly that his husband is as much his totem as is his die. That the smallest misaligned detail had registered, not in his head but in his blood. If they do all have souls, it clicked quietly home there.

“You know, I didn’t even question the bad anniversary,” Arthur says, and Eames gives a soft laugh.

“Well. Wouldn’t be our anniversary if anything went to plan.” He stretches an arm across his chest, wincing as some muscle tugs. “How bad are we talking?”

“You weren’t in that suit, so.” Arthur shrugs into a too pressing silence. “But. There might have been those ratty Levis of yours.”

“So, not a lost cause, then.”

“Not possible. You were there, weren’t you?” But Arthur can’t hold the humor. He shakes his head. “Just, the whole of it…” The house, game, life. Eames. All of it together in one imperfect sphere. “Wasn’t right. It wasn’t right.” 

Eames kisses his palm, then the edge of the ring, and rests his lips against the curl of Arthur’s fingers.

Even in Arthur’s subconscious, even if it’s not quite right, they, at least, are always together. The backbone of his life, his existence. If they ever aren’t, that’s the part Arthur will know immediately as the dream.

~

_There is no remedy for love but to love more. ~David Henry Thoreau_

~fin~


End file.
